Aestheticizing Trauma In Order to Awake Anesthetized Consciences: Alfredo Jaar’s Rwanda Project

Approaching sensitive issues such as death, torture, genocide, war and diaspora by means of an artwork often proves not only to be inadequate and ineffective (politically speaking), but also consists of an ethically questionable methodology. Audiences, victims, observers, and commentators are generally under the impression that artists, who incorporate the “unspeakable’ in their work, are themselves culpable of several crimes: a) exploiting other people’s sufferings; b) opportunistically hijacking audiences’ emotional responses for their own sake; c) substantiating their oeuvre with a meaning they cannot find in themselves; d) conferring to their otherwise solipsistic works a feeling of collective urgency; e) pornography and the scandalous-therefore-(in)famous cycle imbedded in sensationalism-led art practices. This paper examines two art projects as case studies: Alfredo Jaar’s Rwanda Project (1994-2000) and the two-channels video-installation entitled We Wish To Inform You That We Didn’t Know (2010). The paper explores the following issues: Why the “unspeakable” is often ostracised from and by the visual arts to the extend of self-censorship ? Who benefits from keeping something “not-speakable” (i.e. not debated, discussed, publicised) and invisible (underrepresented, if represented at all)? Which strategies can an artist adopt in order to give voice to the “unspeakable” and making it “representable”? How can art bypass the “selective silence and invisibility” structured by governmental policies and mirrored by the media? How to deploy communication strategies capable to overcome rhetorical mainstream discourse and sentimentalism (pietism, paternalism, expiation of post-colonial guilt, etc.) ?